Advisers survey students for SPARC

Sam ReamerStaff WriterOn March 8, Samo advisers released the results of the surveys they distributed to second period classes on Jan. 24. According to I-House Adviser Jessica Garrido, the surveys were part of the recently implemented Support Personal Accountability Report Card (SPARC), which is used by the advisers to gain recognition for Samo’s counseling program.“There’s this thing called SPARC which is a report card for counselors and counseling programs,” Garrido said. We put out one last year and we used the exact questions from the Western Association of School Councils (WASC) review. In order to update the SPARC for this year we wanted to ask the same questions.”According to Garrido the point of SPARC is to provide information to the public on the schools guidance programs.“Our SPARC basically talks about our counseling program and all the people who serve in counseling positions on campus, what degrees they hold, the outreach programs we have in the community and how we serve our students from a counseling prospective,” Garrido said. “It doesn’t determine anything, it basically just gives us data to show how our counseling program is impacting the school.”The results showed that 56 percent of students feel that they can talk to an adult on campus, 49 percent of students feel Samo is a safe place to attend and 49 percent of students are comfortable talking to their adviser to resolve a problem.However some students took issue with the survey, one being sophomore Caroline Zasuly.“I thought it was a little invasive because they made you put your ID number on it,” Zasuly said. “I thought it should be anonymous.”According to S-House Adviser Al Trundle, the SPARC may not accurately represent student opinions because the survey was taken at a time when tensions where high at Samo. Trundle felt that if advisers administered the survey again, the results would be different.“One of the questions that was asked was how safe do you feel at school and that was lower than it had been. But when we did the math in terms of when the shooting had happened and the difficult tensions we’ve had on campus, right in the midst of that was when the students were being asked,” Trundle said. “So the survey is going to be skewed a little to the other side. The reality is that if a student gets shot a block and a half away from campus everybody is going to feel reasonably unsafe.”sreamer@thesamohi.com